How The World's Strongest Material Is Made From Coffee Grounds (Flash Graphene)

hi everyone in this video we'll be taking a look at flash graphene at this point in history i think most people have a general idea of what graphene is it's the strongest material ever discovered with a tensile strength of more than 19 million pounds per square inch it also has impressive electrical properties that promise to revolutionize energy storage technology and the only ingredient needed to make it is common inexpensive carbon in theory unfortunately the other attribute that graphene is well known for is never being able to deliver on these promises in the real world for several decades it's been well researched it's been made and tested but it's too hard to make in large quantities for it to actually be put to widespread use i think that's about to change there are a few existing ways that have been demonstrated to make graphene in bulk the most impressive is an electrochemical exfoliation method where you take a chunk of graphite which is basically the three-dimensional form of graphene soak it in a salt solution and then pass electricity through it so it peels apart layer by atomic layer so you end up with these one-dimensional sheets of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal structure like a piece of chicken wire or honeycomb there are some great videos demonstrating this process which i'll link in the video description below this single atomic layer thickness is the ideal form we're looking for to achieve graphene's best qualities the problem is that with an electrochemical process you don't actually get this at best the graphene is tens of layers thick to several hundred even after processing them with ultrasound to try to peel them apart as best as you can the graphene will also be contaminated with a ton of ordinary graphite powder which further reduces its effectiveness you can improve the results of electrochemical graphene production by starting with a different material called highly ordered pyrolytic graphite but then it's no longer a cheap process a small chip of this type of graphite only about the size of my fingernail costs right around a thousand dollars that should pretty well explain why we're not building skyscrapers out of the stuff high quality graphing has been very expensive to make flash graphing changes things in a big way this process was discovered by a graduate student dewey luong at rice labs this is a process that turns almost anything that contains carbon directly into graphene with no complicated steps or expensive ingredients you can start with anything from coffee grounds to car tires and end up with higher quality graphene than any electrochemical process and the equipment to do so costs less than that one fingernail-sized chip of highly ordered graphite which we would have needed to make only one or two grams of graphene previously this flash graphene process is so simple that i can do a poor man's version of it with only my arc welder and a few wires observe [Music] now to do this properly you need a capacitor bank like this and a relay switch that can discharge it programmed to do so over a period of about 5 milliseconds all of the energy is dumped into a little quartz tube containing your coffee grounds or tire rubber or coal and the extreme heat from the electric discharge breaks every molecular bond in the material every element besides the carbon is blown out of the tube as gas and the carbon as it cools down joins back together into sheets of graphene now normally carbon would prefer to turn into graphite at these temperatures remember that graphite is the three-dimensional form of graphene however since the heat is increased so quickly and then cooled after only five milliseconds the three-dimensional shape doesn't have time to form what we're left with is high quality two-dimensional graphene even better the graphene is randomly oriented which may not sound like a big deal but it makes a huge difference in how easily the sheets can be dispersed into things like plastic or cement a kilogram of cement can be made over 30 percent stronger by mixing in only one gram of flash graphene now i have not yet learned how to use a capacitor bank like this safely which is why i demonstrated the process using my welder the power output is orders of magnitude lower than a capacitor bank so most of the carbon material that i have in my tube did not turn into graphene only a small amount that got caught floating directly in the arc flash had any chance of being converted and without an electron microscope it's very hard to tell if graphene has been produced all the same this is basically how the process works a capacitor bank of this size can make about a gram of graphene with each five millisecond flash of a quality that would cost hundreds of dollars per gram using earlier methods it's been predicted before but this i think is the turning point for graphene it's simple fast and cheap with a result that is suitable for both electronics and as a structural additive i'd like to thank dr james tour the lead chemist at rice labs who is kind enough to send me a copy of the flash graphene research paper along with supplementary information about their experimental setup i really love the goals and attitude that dr tour and his team have taken in bringing the flash graphing process to the wider world well done rice labs you can see some of the videos they have made on this process in the video description below if you'd like to see it done right let me know if you have any further project ideas you would like to see me build in the comments below and a special thank you to all my supporters on patreon thanks for watching i'll see you next time

Channel: NightHawkInLight

Views: 786,959

Keywords: Graphene, Carbon, Nanotubes, How To, DIY, NightHawkInLight

Id: 4Et8FEbCuCs

Length: 6min 52sec (412 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020